7/30/13 10:47 PM EDT

Rush Limbaugh says the Republican Party is pushing itself away from the conservative base and "capitulating" to President Obama on key policy issues like health care reform and immigration.

In a rare, wideranging interview with Fox News host Greta Van Susteren on Tuesday, the conservative talk-radio host said that "the Republican leadership isn't conservative" and that it spent more time fighting the tea party than it did Obama's policies.

"I always thought that as Republicans we opposed Democrats. We wanted to beat them. I don't see that. I don't see any pushback against anything Obama wants to do," Limbaugh told Van Susteren. "The pushback's against the Tea Party. The pushback is against conservatives. It's a stunning thing. The Republican Party's decided that capitulation with the Democrats seems to be the ongoing strategy."

"No, let's go ahead and let ObamaCare be fully implemented and it will implode on itself and people will see how bad it is," he said, mimicking the Republican leadership. "Well, that's not a strategy; that's capitulation. That's not even pushing back against it.... They're capitulating with what the Democrats want. And not just on this, but on immigration, amnesty, whatever you want to call it."

Limbaugh also weighed in on Obama's policies, which he said have "done great damage to this country... to the American culture and the American psyche"; criticized "the slavish media" for having "aligned with Obama to defeat Republicans, to defeat conservatives" and even shared his thoughts on the George Zimmerman trial ("I was really proud," he said.)

But Limbaugh's most passionate remarks came when discussing the Republican party, which he said "is trying to push itself away from its conservative base on a number of issues."

Limbaugh said there was "a battle for the party going on" and expressed faith in the ability of true conservatives to defeat mainstream Republicans.

"I don't think the mainstream of Republican politics can't be beat. I mean -- there's a battle for the party going on. And sure, it would be a tough battle," he said. "But there's no other option. I mean you don’t want to go third party. That just ensures the Democrats are a majority party forever. You don't want to do that. So you have to do what you can to work within the Republican Party and take it over."